Malawi’s health sector is already stretched thin.
Almost half of our health spending estimated at 47 percent comes from donors, while the government contributes just over a quarter and the rest comes from the private sector.
In this fragile system, surging motorcycle-related injuries constitute a neglected burden on limited financial and human resources that we rarely talk about.
Nearly half of adult injury admissions in our public hospitals are due to road traffic crashes and over 60 percent of those involve motorcycles, called kabaza.
The Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services recorded a staggering 1 700 percent rise in motorcycle-related accidents between 2014 and 2022.
In central hospitals, orthopaedic wards are casually referred to as ‘Ku Njinga Ward’ because they are overwhelmed by casualties of motorcycle-related trauma.
The cost of this kabaza craze is worrying.
Bone-related care is an expensive service. Fixing a single fracture costs hundreds of thousands to millions of kwachas when you add up implants, theatre time, anaesthesia and consumables.
That is before we even think about the cost of keeping someone in a hospital bed for weeks, feeding them and allocating already-limited staff.
Most patients have no medical insurance, so the public sector covers almost everything. Every motorcycle injury drains resources that could have gone to maternal care, vaccines or essential drugs.
This is unsustainable for our donor-dependent healthcare.
Patients with motorcycle injuries crowd wards for long periods, require multiple follow-ups and surgeries and consume staff time.
The trauma cases dominate theatre schedules, pushing back elective procedures and slowing services in other departments.
These hidden costs rarely appear in budget books, yet they represent lost services for thousands of other patients.
This is even more painful because most of the casualties of motorcycle crashes are young and productive—the people who should be driving our economy to achieve the aspiration in the Malawi 2063 agenda.
Instead, some die and others end up permanently disabled and families lose breadwinners.
The country loses labour, skills, and future potential.
Preventable injuries are quietly undermining the very human capital we need to move forward.
Yet despite all this, enforcement of road safety rules remains weak. Many riders move around without helmets or licences and pass police checkpoints with little resistance.
The kabaza sector, now the country’s main mode of transport, still operates mostly informally.
Weak coordination, limited resources, and mostly simple neglect have allowed a manageable issue to grow into a persistent and expensive problem.
From both a health and economic point of view, prevention is far cheaper than treatment.
Every kwacha invested in proper enforcement, rider training and public awareness saves several more in surgery, rehabilitation and lost productivity.
Malawi can learn from Rwanda, which has shown that consistent enforcement of helmet laws and structured regulation can sharply reduce road injuries and related costs.
Perhaps, it is time decision-makers, influencers and leaders started confronting the problem decisively.
Just as some have spent nights in maternity wards to understand maternal-health challenges, spending a night at Lilongwe Institute of Orthopaedics and Neurosurgery Ward might help authorities experience firsthand how much of our limited health budget is swallowed by preventable trauma.
Seeing the realities of “Ku Njinga Ward” up-close could trigger the urgency that statistics alone fail to inspire.
Why are we giving this crisis a blind eye? Why do authorities tolerate riders operating without helmets or ignore unregulated transport operations that cost lives and drain public funds?
Every unaddressed cause translates to another broken limb, another overstretched budget line and another lost opportunity for development.
Reducing motorcycle injuries is not just a health issue. It is an economic necessity and a test of our commitment to Malawi’s development goals.
Investing in prevention, proper regulation and wider insurance coverage will protect lives and safeguard our limited fiscal space.
If we keep ignoring “Ku Njinga Ward,” we are not only failing the injured. We are quietly undermining our own future and development.
